Radiohead Price: Whatever You Want

I just ordered Radiohead’s new album, In Rainbows, for about $5. You can only pay in Pounds Sterling, but the price is entirely up to the buyer (so you can choose to pay £0.00 if you so desire). The business model relies on consumers paying for something they can get for free, where I think any motivation to pay nothing is actually driven by inconvenience rather than perceived value. I tend to leave pretty good tips at restaurants, so I have no trouble conceptualizing spending a little extra simply so that someone gets paid a little extra. I do think that the difficulty of making micropayments by typing in credit card numbers and similarly complicated transactions is holding back a lot commerce. I’m always optimistic that things will be more efficient in the future, but check out my third point in my 2003 post on a similar topic.